 | | | Los Angeles Times Posts Pulitzer Prize-Winning Entry on Web Site | LOS ANGELES, April 10, 2000 – The Los Angeles Times has posted on its Web site the in-depth narrative tracing the harsh racial history of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, that today won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for Los Angeles Times Atlanta bureau chief J.R. Moehringer. The story is available at www.latimes.com/geesbend.
This is the 24th Pulitzer Prize The Times has won and the eighth since 1990.
“Crossing Over,” which was published August 22, 1999 as a special four-page section, is a retrospective look at Gee’s Bend, where the Alabama River has separated blacks and whites for 180 years. The Civil War-era town is one of the few places in the nation where the descendants of slaves still live on the land of their ancestors.
Moehringer spent several months in Gee's Bend interviewing residents and conducting painstaking research of old tax, plantation, census and property records as well as 160-year-old newspaper clippings and no fewer than 50 volumes of published works. This effort took him from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and the Selma Public Library to the Alabama State Archives, Woodruff Library at Emory University and the Wilcox County Courthouse.
Moehringer was assisted by researcher Edith Stanley of The Times' Atlanta Bureau.
"Crossing Over" featured extensive photography by Times Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Clarence Williams. He won the award in 1998 for his powerful images documenting the plight of young children with parents addicted to alcohol and drugs.
Moehringer was a 1998 Pulitzer finalist for "The Champ," a Times feature story that chronicled a heavyweight boxer's glory days and his fall.
Moehringer was named Atlanta bureau chief in 1998 after serving as a correspondent in the bureau. He joined The Times in 1994 and was assigned to the newspaper's Orange County Edition as a Metro reporter. He previously worked for the Rocky Mountain News and The New York Times.
The Los Angeles Times, winner of 24 Pulitzer Prizes, is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country with a daily circulation of 1, 098,347 and 1,385,787 Sunday. In addition to its National Edition, The Times publishes four daily regional editions covering the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the San Fernando Valley, and Orange and Ventura counties. | |